Sonic Classic

For information the actual community rather than history, see SClassic Subculture.

Sonic Classic is an online community made up of, among other things, Sonic the Hedgehog fans. Today, it is a wide-encompassing board with over 700 members and growing. It originally existed as Sonic 2 Beta and changed it's name to Sonic Classic later in its life.

Early History

The Beginning

On January 3rd 1999, Simon Wai's Sonic 2 Beta Page was born, dedicated to the prototype version of this great game. The very first edition of the site had an animated gif of the title screen, and featured white text on a blue SONIC/MILES morphing background.

The discovery of Sonic 2 Beta ROM marked a significant point in the Sonic Secrets scene. Before the ROM was available, groundless speculations were made based on some poorly scanned pictures, and lots of faith was required in order for many theories to stand. After the ROM was discovered, investigations were made by means of "hacking" the savestates or the ROM directly. Hacking is now a foundation for new theories, which brings the sonic community as a whole another step closer to the truth of what Sonic 2 was intended to be. It is unknown who dumped the ROM found by Simon Wai, but it was found on a Chinese web site after a thread in the newsgroups about it. The wide-spread circulation of this ROM file soon followed.

The ezBoard

Simon Wai's Departure

In early 2000, Simon Wai decided to put his focus towards college, and left the Sonic 2 Beta as an archive, soon to be deleted. A member of the message boards, Pelord archived the site and rehosted it on the original Sonic Stuff Research Group in May of 2000. Sonic 2 Beta's focus was more on game theories, and general Sonic interest; the actual hacking and discoveries were usually posted on Area 51 and Tom's SoStH Page. Although the actual site received few updates, one section -- the mailbag -- was very popular, and it was the orginial orgins of several jokes such as "I wod lick a Sonic 2 ROMS"

On March 24, 2001, Pelord created the ezBoard edition of the Sonic 2 Beta Messageboard, a switch from Simon's AnyBoard creation. Time passed, and the need for moderators became apparent. LocalHMC and Terunaga were chosen. Sonic Sue became the first administator on Sonic 2 Beta after winning a hoax contest. During the ezBoard era, Terunaga, Bryn2k, Ashura2k, L0st, and TStodden served as moderators.

As time passed, Sonic 2 Beta found itself drifting away from Sonic research, becoming outpaced by the quickly-growing Sonic Cult and the prime days of Area 51. Thus, too, the mood of the forums started to drift toward Sonic information compilation, with things such as manual translations from Japanese Sonic games, and became more of a social center for those in the scene.

The PACHUKA Incident

In July 2002, Sonic 2 Beta administrator Sonic Sue returned from a month's absense, due to computer woes. Upon her return, she noticed that the forums were different than when she had left, but she saw no reason not to do her job as she had been instructed to. About a day after her return, member Kilometers Prower posted a 'discovery' in the Sonic 2 Beta Discussion forum about an area in Labyrinth Zone (of Sonic 1) that could be reached via debug mode. A member known as Sonique said in a not too pleasant way that it was already known and posted about at other boards.

Sue asked Sonique not to flame other users (per Pelord's rules), and told her that members of Sonic 2 Beta had obviously not seen the discovery, and since some members do not visit other boards. It was a simple, polite request not to flame.

The next day, the first thing Sue heard when she got online was an IM from a member known as MangoMan, telling her that the Beta Discussion forum was under attack by a member named PACHUKA, who was spam-bumping tons of old topics using images with offensive references and language (Note: Pelor d always had a no swearing rule.) and that she was being flamed also. PACHUKA was online at this time, and so Sue gave him a number of reasonable warnings asking him to stop. (She recalls about ten of them. Other members tried convincing him to stop as well.

The inital warnings were ignored, and Sue warned that if he continued spamming, he would be banned. It did continue, and she backed up her warning by actually banning him. She was the only admin online at the time, and could not let the forums get more disrupted than they already had.

Approximately ten to fifteen minutes after the ban, PACHUKA replaced his avatar with a message saying "Sonic Sue is a cunt", and posted some unpleasant things on his website. Within days, people who had never been seen on the forums before had started coming over to Sonic 2 Beta messageboard to flame her for being ban-happy, even though PACHUKA was the second person she ever banned.

Simon Wai's Return

In late 2002, Simon Wai returned from seemingly thin air to announce his return to the community. Simon recreated Sonic 2 Beta the way he wanted it, and told Pelord he wanted the name Sonic 2 Beta back. Pelord agreed to the terms, and Sonic 2 Beta became known as Sonic Classic. Simon said that Sonic 2 Beta Message Board could remain open, but they must change there name. One of the few names put on the table was 'Sonic Classic', which was the name of Pelord's old Sonic-related website. The name stuck and it became official in December 2003. (At the time of the switch, Sonic Classic was located at pub10.ezboard.com/bsonic2beta). The current ezBoard link is http://go.ezboard.com/bsonic2beta

SSonicNET

Leaving ezBoard

Although ezBoard had served Sonic Classic's hosting needs for years, the ever rising price of Gold Community forced the staff to move. Free hosting for a message board the size of Sonic Classic, however, wasn't something easily found. A small hosting site for Sonic-based web pages, named SSonicNET was run by members of the communty Sonic McTails and Alexbt. It had opened in July of 2002, offered free hosting to Sonic based sites, and had hosted a backup of Area 51 and a few other sites. Pelord eventually decided upon SSonicNET for hosting. Shortly after hearing this news, SSonicNET moved to Invision Power's Hosting, and was redesigned.

The first beta version of this new board was installed in November of '02, at http://projectnemesis.ibforums.com/sclassic (later moved to http://projectnemesis.ibforums.com/sclassic/forums ). It was at this time that Sonic McTails and Alexbt became full-time technical administrators on Sonic Classic staff. Alex, specifically handled the daunting task of fully implementing the ezBoard look-and-feel into the Invision Power skin design.

Invision Board 1.1 Final was installed, and was upgraded to 1.2 before going ILVE on February 16, 2003, and has remained on SSonicNET's hosting through March 18, 2005. Sonic Classic was SSonicNET's largest site, using 4-10GB of bandwidth monthly.

Bumpy Beginning

The beginning of the new board was arguably characterized by its friction with Sonic Cult. Many arguements erupted and many members left for a variety of reasons; however, SClassic moved on. During this friction, hackers obtained Alexbt's password to the ezBoard. All of the topics in Dust Hill Zone, the staff forums, were made public for all to see, and at a point soon after that, the ezBoard was entirely reskinned to look like Sonic Cult. A quick cry of help to ezBoard gave the power back to its rightful owners, but at that point a great deal of damage was done, leading to the entire board being wiped with no archives.

Sonic Classic Moves On

sclassic.net

In March 2005, newly adminned staffer Scarred Sun made an offer to Sonic McTails to purchase SSonicNET. McTails declined the offer, and a plan to move Sonic Classic and SHIT went ahead. On Friday, March 18, 2005, after hosting was finally granted, SClassic and SHIT made an impromptu switch. SHIT w as the first site on the new Sonic Classic to fully make the transition. Delays to the Sonic Classic forums were a day long due to a large database. The forums were brough back online in the evening on March 19th.